Minimum wage is simply a constraint that prohibits the creation of some jobs that are available to the most vulnerable members of society in economically depressed regions.
Therefore, making lower-paying jobs illegal just because their salary falls below an arbitrary threshold only stops or hinders those jobs from being created, at the expense of higher unemployment rates.
I'm sure people working on shitty minimum wage jobs would not stay in the same minimum wage job if there were better higher-paying alternatives available to them. If they have no better alternatives than those jobs I don't understand how eliminating them by arbitrarily raising the minimum legal salary limit would leave them better off.
TFA is written by a guy who took the job to collect anecdotes to write a book to show how miserable life is for low wage earners and now it is time to market the book. Sorry but I am skeptic about this article and think it is an exaggeration. At the same time if it is true why are folks not simply resigning and going to a better job? It is a free country isn’t it? Why is minimum wage still so low and why are all political parties not coming together to raise it?
That’s just a jab with zero informational content.
It is reasonable to be skeptical if TFA is an advert for the author’s book on low-wage jobs. Since the whole article reduces to an anecdote, doubly so.
I really want trustworthy primary source reporting on conditions in the warehouses, but it’s really hard to find a neutral source who doesn’t either have a job they want to keep or an axe to grind.
I strongly suspect the working conditions are much harsher than they should be, but I also strongly suspect this is becoming a meme and people are dog-piling or even virtue signaling to some extent.
I clicked on the growingupbilingual link. About every third word is a highlighted brand. I have trouble reading it as a personal account when it looks so much like advertising.
Yes many people won’t understand this article it but there is a strong and subtle point that Balaji makes. It is the power that technology brings to the common people. Technology will one day make food shelter healthcare clothing ie all the basic necessities so automated and so cheap that everyone can be guranteed free access to these basic needs. Already certain countries have started experimenting with annual basic income. This does not stop people from excelling or working hard to do better but will help us to stop worrying about going homeless or going broke just because one loses ones job. This is where technology can take us and this is what we dream about. Thank you.
...or simply trading those "rights" for the freedom to be responsible for their own lives. One gives up a lot of freedom to be an employee. That tradeoff might be worth it for some people, and not as much for others.
> One gives up a lot of freedom to be an employee.
As an employee I can walk away from my job any time I want and just get another. If I had my own business that would be way harder.
Because of that I feel actually more free and independent as an employee. You just need to make sure to have a good financial buffer so that losing/switching a job won't hurt very much. Then your employer also can't pressure you too much.
I feel exactly the opposite: I'm independent now, and I can walk away from my current gig without all that much disruption in my life because I don't depend on an employer for benefits or what have you. While I'm not walking away, I've got more flexibility than I might with an employer (depending on the employer).
You're 100% right about having a buffer, though. That's a pretty immovable prerequisite no matter what your professional situation is.
They have a volume agreement with the postal services. So for example every month they pay 100$ for shipping 100 items. However if some month they have only shipped 90 items they still have room to include another 10 items no matter what they sale it for. The real story is that they are giving things for free and no one can beat them. How do I know this? Just through some rational thinking.
Yeah? Go to a place like China or India where there is no place to park your car. Nowadays almost everyone in the world have a car so we need place to park. If you don't want to own a car it is your problem. The new generation is losing independence FAST....
> Nowadays almost everyone in the world have a car
In Helsinki, less than half of households have cars. In many areas of central Helsinki, more than 60% are carless. I'd be surprised if car ownership was significantly more popular in other European cities. If there's good public transit and the city is walkable, a car is a waste of money for most people.
"Sometimes the parked cars are a nice buffer between the street and pedestrians."
Sure, but the current design of the sidewalk has to accommodate a car door opening at any point, as someone could park anywhere. When roads are no longer used for parking, sidewalks could be lined with a narrow strip of trees or something, with a gap every 100m for cars to load/unload passengers.
All new monitoring systems should be named YAMF-X (Yet Another Monitoring Framework)
Jokes aside.. while the stream processing on events seem powerful there was something similar in graphite but probably not as advanced or easy to use. However the push approach brings its own limitations specially on existing setups.
